The Sensemakers Club is a community-powered education space where curious people come to grow without performing or pretending to have it all figured out.
Are you a sensemaker?
A sensemaker is someone who helps people understand complex, messy, or ambiguous situations and turn that understanding into better decisions and action.
It’s not a job title.
It’s a role someone plays when clarity is needed. Some people make sense for a season, and some of us are professionals and hobbyists.
You might be a sensemaker if you...
- Translate between teams
- Fix structural issues no one else sees
- Clock patterns others don’t
- Care deeply about clarity and inclusion
- Question what’s next
- Maintain systems that prevent chaos
- Document what others skip
This week at the club
We are on our end of season break this week! No sessions are scheduled. Season 2 starts next week!
Browse our discussion groups or check out our full calendar.
2 PM ET Awaiting the Crowd: Exploring the Relationship Between Liminal Spaces and Place-Making
Hosted by Emily Lowry
Explore the design and intention behind liminal spaces, physical and virtual, and the role these in-between places play in sensemaking, community, and placemaking.
2 PM ET Release and Resonance
Hosted by Tonia Bartz & Lizz Bacon
A virtual wellness experience that pairs guided movement and writing to release emotions with a resonant sound bath of drums, singing bowls, and chimes. Participants stay muted; cameras optional.
2:30 PM ET ShiftUX Redux Discussion
Hosted by David Justh, Lorelei Brown, Mike Creech, Emily Claflin, Leslie Mollner & Abby Covert
Compare notes on what we learned at ShiftUX26. Attendees are encouraged to bring their thoughts in whatever form they take, and those who couldn't attend are welcome too.
2 PM ET Information Has Geography
Hosted by Bill Dorman
A talk on how information architecture creates landscapes where people and machines orient themselves, and what changes for wayfinding when AI becomes conversational.
No Sessions Open Day
No club sessions scheduled
Take a breather and rest up for Makesensemess! tomorrow.
1–4 PM ET Makesensemess!
Hosted by Abby Covert
Our annual online gathering where sensemakers share stories, insights, and practical wisdom about navigating complexity in real work and real life. The nerdiest party of the year since 2021.
What’s going on?
Week of October 26, 2026
Abby Covert
Chief Sensemaker
Last week the club started with Moving Through Fear on Monday. Members tried to find where fear lives in the body and what it’s really telling us when there’s no actual danger in the room. On Tuesday, Making Sense of The Future had members write short fiction about how our sense of what’s real might change by 2038, then hold those stories up against The Matrix. Wednesday’s Making Sense of Neurodiversity & Neuroinclusion took a seasonal angle on masks: the invisible ones we wear every day, and what it takes to build spaces where we can take them off. On Thursday, Making Sense of Facilitation asked whether facilitators should ever share their own opinion and how much neutrality matters. The week closed on Friday with Making Sense of Language, which flipped the usual inclusive-language conversation around to ask how systems can meet people who search with outdated or non-inclusive terms without lowering their standards.
Themes from last week:
- The masks we wear and the rooms where we can drop them
- Trading attention for convenience
- No one is truly neutral
SPECIAL EVENT
October 30
1 to 4 PM ET
Makesensemess
Makesensemess is an annual (virtual) celebration of sensemaking that started in 2021. It is celebrated every November and includes an annual keynote from Abby Covert as well as a selected group of Brave Sensemakers telling true tales of messes past, present and future.
Gaps between our capability and our confidence create discomfort.
Take our FREE 24-question assessment to reveal the gaps in your unique sensemaker shape.
Request the Sensemaker Assessment